look up

In Psalm 121 the psalmist says they will lift up their eyes to the mountains. That their help comes from God, the Maker of heaven and earth. “The mountains” for the people of God on pilgrimage in the old covenant was the sacred meeting place of God and his people where revelation and worship would take place: the temple. In the new covenant, Jesus and his work of salvation becomes the temple of which those in Jesus become a part of.

A general understanding of the history of the times surrounding Jesus’ birth sees a people who were downtrodden. Under Rome’s rule, and with a temple system which was mostly corrupt through its alliance with Herod. God’s promises in the prophets of restoration to the land and great blessing overflowing to the world, had hardly been fulfilled. There was a sense of continued exile. Many of them were back in the land promised, but the land was not theirs. At least not in terms of God’s promises.

Of course Jesus enters in. For those who have faith the exile is over. But not as they would understand. The land would now become the earth in keeping with the prophetic promises and God’s promise to Abraham that in him and in his seed, Christ, all nations would be blessed, and that Abraham would inherit the world. But not in a worldly way, but as those who are subjects and at the same time family members in the kingdom of God come in Jesus.

All of this applies to us today. In various ways we may feel under it, with heads hung down. But through Jesus, God tells us to lift up our heads, to look up. This is something the psalmist determined to do, and something we’re to do as well because of Jesus, and God’s grace in him.

During this Advent season, I want to practice “looking up” daily in my own life and circumstances, and regularly with God’s people. Looking for the blessed Savior who came to be just as human as we are. And in that humanity along with his God-ness saved, saves and will save us. As we find God’s salvation in him. For us and through us to the world.